One of my all time favorites.

Fantastic!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Was pretty to look at, but that was the only thing positive.The movie is about a woman and a man that are alone in a cabin, whilst being unknowingly being stalked by a ghost. And a metaphorical devil manipulating all of them also, because what else would a metaphorical devil do. The movie end with a literal deus ex machina saving the day. And a sequel bait.The movie fails being as eerie as they tries to be, and fails with the drama, by trying to keep the eerie feeling.And the only character having autonomy in the movie is the metaphorical devil, and the literal deus ex machina. Which are dull. And by some reason birds are tossed at outhouses.

The film does have some strong points, but concludes in a fatally flawed ending. The cinematography and scenery were beautiful. However, the characters' relationship remains quite 'cold' and fraught. Thus, it can hardly qualify to be called romantic. It was, instead, a small scale exploration of how a woman with psychological trauma deals with the possibilities of a new relationship. On that count, it did quite well. The unknown nature of the apparition also played well through the first half of the film until it ended in a Faustian twist. Unfortunately, the film went downhill from there. There was no more suspense to sustain the viewer's interest. But worst of all is the Deus ex Machina ending. It left me feeling cheated and provides no sense of resolution. Is the filmmaker trying to say that the only path to healing is through a divine intervention? Are we nothing but playthings of higher powers or film auteurs?

If you want to be afraid, this isn't your movie. It's somewhat horrorish and there is a little ghost story, but this film will not scare you. Think of it more as a grounded supernatural drama. Let's get the good things out of the way first. Yes, there is some good about this film. The core idea, the basic story is good. Refreshing, actually. I thought it'd be much worse. I've seen better movies of this genre with massively inferior story lines. This movie has a good heart. The setting is confined enough to be intense. Mira Sorvino can act. She's only decent, but it's enough. Her pretty face and that certain natural charisma is a plus. You get lots of beautiful scenery and the shots are (usually) well framed.Now, on to the bad. There's plenty.Either the film was shot with shitty equipment or the conversion to blu-ray went horribly wrong, because any movement is out of focus and blurry. I'm betting on both. If you have to get this, go with DVD instead. The scenery and some shots look pretty good, but only because good-looking things are on the frame. Technically, not good at all.The music. This is a good example of "how to ruin an atmosphere with a sub-par soundtrack". When that certain background music isn't constantly on nearly every scene, it fails miserably when it's trying to create suspense. It's laughably bad at times and the timing seems to be often very, very wrong. It's like it isn't enough that the score seems to be from a whole different movie, because it's still used so poorly. When a movie is better off with no soundtrack at all, which is the case here, something is terribly wrong.Acting and dramatization often fails. Sorvino is alright, everyone else is struggling a bit. Some parts of certain performances aren't up to the task, and some parts - like the music - seem to be from another movie. "The Presence" isn't trying to be a B-movie, but some of the acting is reaching up to B-level. When dialogue needs to be really good, it isn't. When something needs to be A, it's B. There are many scenes with lost potential, be it of drama, horror or suspense. You see the potential immediately after it's gone, scene by scene.In short, this film has a good heart, but a severe lack of talent, effort and focus. It could've been good in the right hands. I can easily feel sympathy for this failure, because there really was a solid idea behind it. I paid 2 euros for the blu-ray. I don't know if it was worth it. It's a shame. I can't flat out hate this and out of sympathy I'm giving this a generous 4/10, but it's very likely that I won't watch it again.

I'm giving this movie a 5. As other reviewers have stated, it was beautiful, filmed in Oregon with all that natural scenery as a backdrop. However,the director tried to hard to make it artsy fartsy. We have large stretches of no dialogue and the characters staring off into space. We have zero explanation of why this girl is important enough to have both an angel and a demon in her life, and even though we get the idea her father was abusive sexually and physically; we have no explanation of who the ghost is. Is it her father? Is that why he needs to ask for forgiveness to receive redemption? Nothing in the story is there to support or refute it. Another point lacking explanation is the bizarre outhouse. Why does a bird kill itself against it every time she enters? What was beating on it when the boyfriend went in? Is this the spot the abuse took place? Zero explanation. It felt like a random scare to make this seem more like a ghost story! Poor storytelling.Anyway, my complaint is that although the director understood the visual aspect of story telling, he forgot the story part. So 5 points for a beautiful cinematography, zero points for plot/characterization.